


And Contemplate Your Navel

by LilyChenAppreciationSociety



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare, Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: 15th Century Spain, Backstory, Gen, I Love Downworlders So Much, Magnus Bane Deserves Nice Things, Warlocks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 16:55:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7942021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyChenAppreciationSociety/pseuds/LilyChenAppreciationSociety
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young Magnus deals with the effects of growing into his power, and growing further from his past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Contemplate Your Navel

**Author's Note:**

> Magnus backstory fic, dealing with a little tidbit about warlocks I always found confusing.
> 
> Originally posted to (http://marcythewerewolf.tumblr.com/post/149861145944/)

Magnus Bane woke up the morning after his twenty fifth birthday with a hangover, a blood loss headache (which mostly served to give the hangover a mellow overtone of wooziness), and no belly button. 

He dealt with the hangover first. 

He still had a spark of magic and a skin of beer hidden under his bed and those served to clear his head somewhat. He had shucked off his bloody clothes before crashing into bed, which was good, but they’d ended up on the rug, which was bad. He gathered up the mess of red stained cloth and threw it in the corner, to be dealt with later preferably by the laundry lady. 

(There were somethings about city living that Magnus could get used to. Aside from having enough people around that there was always a conversation to be had or some new excitement, people also tended to mind their own business, for a price.)

He was pulling on his second best shirt when he noticed his belly button, or lack thereof. Where there had once been an adorable twist of skin- a memory of a time when he had been still unformed and mostly loved- there was now just a smooth expanse of coppery skin. 

He poked the place his navel had once resided, just to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. It was definitely gone. 

He poked his head out his door. Alfonso the beggar was stationed in the alley, as he usually was, taking a well earned siesta since it was nearly noon. Magnus crept outside and gently shook him. 

“Alfonso?”

“Mmmr?” the old man mumbled, and then jumped. He was always vary around Magnus, even if they did have a standing truce of sorts. Magnus didn’t tell Isabela he hung around the back of her boarding house, and Alfonso vetted his visitors and didn’t call a priest when Magnus summoned up the odd imp from hell. He was the closest thing Magnus had to a real friend in Spain. 

(The Silent Brothers, his probationary officers and former saviors, didn’t count.)

“Where did my belly button go?” Magnus asked him. 

“What?”

Magnus gestured his his helpfully bare torso. Alfonso squinted. “You healed up nicely from that stabbing last night.” he said helpfully. “You were bleeding all over the place when that nice blue girl helped you home. I was worried.”

Magnus waved a hand. He knew he healed nicely. It was almost automatic at this point, he couldn’t die if he tried to. The occasional attempted murder by some disgruntled client or jealous lover wasn’t much to worry over, even if he was a little touched by Alfonso’s concern. “I saw my ruined trousers, thank you. I’m talking about my navel. You know, everyone has one?”

“Do you?” Alfonso asked. “I know you ain’t exactly human,” he said helpfully.

“I- I did-” Magnus said and despite himself he wanted to cry.

He hadn’t been a child in a long time, and he’d been living on his own for just as long. He had travelled the world, called up demons, confronted his father and not died which was apparently more than most people could say. His most recent stint in Spain was mostly to hassle the Silent Brothers about the mythical Spiral Labyrinth and he was trying to keep his head down as much as he could, but despite that he was having fun. It was nice to explore the seedy underworld a bit, to finally be confident enough in his powers to take risks with them. He had money, a client base, even his own room and a landlady who didn’t ask questions. He was starting to tiptoe into the local magical scene. 

He had been thriving, and most of all he had been human. 

Humanity in Magnus’s opinion wasn’t measured by helplessness or lack of magic. It was how you acted and what you did. Magnus tried to be kind and funny and live life to it’s fullest. He was not a stagnating relic like the older warlocks he had met. He still had some spark in him. But now he felt the facade of pseudo-normalcy crashing down. 

Was this how it started? Was humanity peeled away from you one layer at a time like the skin of an onion? You lost your belly button, then your heart, then worst of all your sense of humour. 

Magnus slid down the wall to sit next to Alfonso, who patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. “Go back to bed, boy.” he said in a tone that was almost fatherly. “You will see things better in the morning. I’ll tell everyone you’re indisposed.”

“I don’t want to-” Magnus tried to explain and found he couldn’t come up with the words. He didn’t want to freeze up, lose himself, draw another inch further from humanity. He ran a hand over his stomach, warm skin and the soft planes of muscles underneath, the sparking strangely unfamiliar remnants of the healing magic he had used last night after the…. was it a turf war? Magnus mostly remembered that werewolves had been involved. 

It felt familiar. If he didn’t think about it he could almost ignore the topographical feature that was missing.

Above his head someone cleared their throat. 

She was a young woman in a faded burgundy dress, with dark skin that flickered like a glamour and a look of acute embarassment and disdain as she tried to ignore Magnus’s half naked body. She looked familiar. 

“You were blue last night.” Alfonso said suspiciously, and Magnus remembered her. 

She had been a cautious shadow in the background of the magical market until the fight had broken out, then she and Magnus had made a hasty alliance to try to escape from the fray. She had knocked two brawling faeries’ heads together, then Magnus had taken a claw to the gut for her and she had dragged him out into the street and pressed her hands against his gaping wound, had helped him heal it. 

“Catarina?” he said, falteringly. 

She nodded. “I came to make sure you weren’t dead.”

Magnus spread his arms wide. “Alive, I’m afraid. Slightly belly buttonless, but we can’t have everything, can we?”

Catarina’s eyes widened in alarm and she knelt beside him, hands that glowed blue under their glamour exploring Magnus’s skin with clinical precision. She sat back on her heels, confusion on her face. 

“Did I do that?” she asked, and Magnus took another look at her face, still not yet done growing, and her provincial mode of dress. It was always hard to tell with warlocks, but he thought she was younger than he was, which was saying something. 

“I don’t think so,” Magnus admitted. “I healed myself, mostly. You just…. helped. Thank you, by the way.”

“Thank you.” Catarina said, all sharp edged politeness. “I didn’t expect to get into trouble.”

“Your first time at the market?”

She nodded, and unlike most people confronted by an awkward pause, didn’t surrender more information.

Magnus staggered to his feet and Catarina stood, dusting off her hands on her dress. 

“I should probably go back to bed.” 

Catarina didn’t look scandalized, just mildly judgmental and Magnus was starting to suspect that was her default expression. “I should get back to her mother.” she agreed. “Thank you for your help last night.”

“Thank you for checking I wasn’t dead.” Magnus said. Alfonso was looking at them both like they might explode. “Maybe we’ll see each other around?”

Catarina had the fluid, non commital shrug of a born Spaniard. Magnus was a little less worried for her and her helpful hands and flickering glamour. Maybe she wouldn’t end up dead on the street. 

Magnus stumbled back into bed, and hoped Alfonso’s offer to turn away any visitors still held. He didn’t need any silly merchants looking for love potions today. He finished off the beer, and found an orange he had been saving for dinner, a present for himself. 

Happy birthday, Magnus, he thought. It was a general approximation, he couldn’t remember when his real birthday was, but he liked the excuse to splurge a little. 

The orange tasted as keen and acerbic as Catarina’s intelligent smile, and he made a note to himself to look out for her. He knew as well as anyone that young warlocks could get themselves in trouble easily. 

(How quickly he had gone from one of the cursed children in danger to one of the magical adults worrying over them.)

He pressed his palm against his abdomen and felt his steady breathing and the unnatural smoothness of stomach, and knew in his gut that he had just passed some milestone. His childhood had literally been wiped from his body. The little boy who had been loved by his mother- until his eyes turned gold- was gone. It was a sobering thought, and he was all out of beer. 

He summoned another skin from the drinking house down the street. Laws were for humans anyway and Magnus was very provably not of their number.


End file.
